Thread by @akurjata

"1984" was required reading for my high school English class and the aspect of it that stood out for me was Newspeak, and the character whose job it was to refine the English language to serve the purposes of Big Brother. Especially how he did it.

The way it worked was he removed words from the language. "Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" he said at what point, explaining the value of removing words from the vocabulary

This concept has stuck with me, especially as I've learned real-world examples of how limitations on our language influences thought. The famous one is Guugu Yimithirr, a language that does not have relative directions like "left" and "right" just "north" "south" etc

The result is speakers of this language have a much stronger internal compass because at all times they need to be aware of absolute cardinal direction to describe where things are nytimes.com/2010/08/29/mag…

There are others, of course. The way we see colour is influenced by how our culture and language categorizes the difference between "green" and "yellow" for example. Other languages contain details about our relationship to a person in the words we use for them

Language encourages us to create categories between things that aren't absolute, or to fail to notice differences between things if there aren't words to describe those things. It shapes our thought

Growing up, it never occurred to me — nor did I ever learn — that the notion that everyone who gives birth is not necessarily a woman, or that everyone with male genitalia was not necessarily a man, or that people could identify as anything other than "man" or "woman"

It has only been later in life that I've become educated about the spectrum of human identity, and the differences between biology, sex and gender

With this understanding I've also learned new words and terms to help describe and understand these things. "Cis", "gender expression" etc. I have added new words to my vocabulary to better understand the complexity and beauty of the world

But I've also heard people say these sorts of terms are Orwellian. That introducing new words and vocabulary to our language is a form of oppressive Newspeak

But what I remember from 1984 is that Big Brother didn't want to add words to the English language to repress thought. He wanted to remove words. He wanted to limit communication to the most simplistic form possible in order to reduce and eliminate free thought

It's a pretty obvious point. Here are the Cliff's Notes on it. "A living language, such as English, one that has the capability of diverse expression, has the tendency to gain words and therefore broaden the awareness and knowledge of its speakers." cliffsnotes.com/literature/n/1…

Overall, the inclusivity movement has been about adding words to our language to express a broader range of possible human experiences, and the backlash against it has largely been based on an insistence that English remain static, with little to no evolution.

anyways, /thread

Ugh ok maybe a bit more. It occurs to that a lot of the backlash to this stuff is people don't understand that it is additive rather than reductive. For example they hear "people who give birth" and think that is being used *instead of* "pregnant women" or "mothers" and object...

... because they think their identity is being erased. The way I understand it though is that it is additive: you can be both a person who gives birth AND a pregnant woman AND a mother, or you can be a person who gives birth AND non-binary. It is allowing for MORE ways of being

But if you limit it to "pregnant women" you are removing those other possibilities. You are being limiting in the way people speak about their experiences. I do get it can sometimes sound awkward but part of that is what we are used to and part of it is just tryna figure it out

Anyways ok yeah now /thread, I think.

With gratefulness to those of you who stand up and tell the world who you are even when the world tries to disagree

Better phrasing

https://twitter.com/kwardvancouver/status/1450662654792462339?t=SdwtzAwb-WA9MhETJIs3mg&s=19